Joe Philbin transcript: 'Everybody is held to a high standard'

August 12, 2012

(Opening statement) – “Before we get started, I wanted just to let you guys know I have not spoken with Chad Johnson yet. However, I do plan to meet with him in the relatively near future. Today, I’ve been focused on the football team, the 89 other players that are here today in meetings and practice. At this point and until I speak with Chad directly, it would be premature for me to make any comments about the situation, so I’m going to leave all comments that regard to Chad and the particular situation at that.”

(On practicing in the rain today) – “It’s good practice for us. You need to do it. It’s great having an indoor facility right next to our practice field. Obviously, we’re very very fortunate to have that. Yeah, it was good for us to get out there. I thought we did some good things out there with the ball, but you could see a couple passes kind of skidded through the hands and those type of things. Living down here, probably, we may get caught in those situations again, so I’m glad we were able to get some work in. We think we did the blitz period in it, a little bit of special teams. I thought it was good work.”

(On what the plan is for the quarterback reps in practice with David Garrard being out) – “Our plan right now is to, we’ve got to, this is one of our, to me, is the biggest week we have in training camp from a practice standpoint, four days in a row. We’ve got a lot of things we want to accomplish, a lot of situations we want to cover and so we’re going to kind of let things play out. The good news is for Ryan (Tannehill), Matt (Moore) and Pat (Devlin) is they’re going to get a lot, we’re still as you saw today, we’re still doing some two-sided drills. There’s a bunch of reputations out there, so all of the quarterbacks are getting plenty of work right now. Then, as the week progresses, we’re going to kind of make a decision. Our plan all along was to hopefully get all three of those quarterbacks reps with the first group in the preseason. Again, we haven’t quite crossed that bridge yet, but I envision, I think Ryan had, I’m trying to think, Matt had in the 20-range or Ryan had in the 40-range I think the other day. Pat had a good number too. We’ll figure all that out as the week progresses.”

(On if he’s going to get quarterback Ryan Tannehill reps with the first-team offense in the game against the Panthers on Friday) – “Sure. In one of these games, we’re definitely going to try to, sure. Absolutely.”

(On if Garrard’s injury changes the timeline to determine a starting quarterback) – “Not necessarily. Again, to reiterate my position on that, which is obviously a point of interest. I think I’ve stated in the past that, in an ideal situation, you’d probably like to have when you have a quarterback competition going on in training camp, you’d probably like to have your starter potentially named after your second preseason game. The plan right now is that our first-team would play the most snaps against Atlanta. That would lead you to believe if things are right or the situation dictates that you can have your starter by then, that would probably be the best scenario because the practice reps you’d get at a higher percentage. We’re probably not going to do a lot of two-group things next week. Again, I’m going to remain flexible. We’re going to look at the film. We’re going to evaluate the position and see what’s going to be best for the football team to win games. I could stand up here and I do believe, I think that could be the scenario that unfolds. However, it may not. We’re just going to have to kind of, again, be flexible, do the best thing for the team and make a decision when that time comes.”

(On how much he took away from the game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in regards to the quarterback competition) – “There’s some good tape on there. It wasn’t probably on either side a high percentage of pressure from either side, it was probably more coverage. I mean we saw some blitzes. They certainly gave us a couple, but not a ton. (It’s) part of the evaluation of the quarterbacks that’s helpful. That’s why we do so much of it in our own practices is just to get a feel how they respond. The blitz-pressure plays can be real momentum changers in a ball game on either side of the ball. Before we put a quarterback out there, you better have a level of confidence that he’s prepared for those situations, has some kind of what we like to say, has a toolbox, some answers, some resources that he can go to in those critical situations to either protect himself or get the ball out quick or a combination of those.”